It Happened in Egypt

								

'Resamond' and couldn't) because Monny has read 'The Garden of Allah,'
and wants the 'desert to take her.' That book had nothing to do with
Egyptian deserts; but any desert will do for Monny. What she expects it
to do with her exactly when it has taken her, on the strength of a Cook
ticket, I don't quite know; but I may later, because she vows she'll
keep me at her side with hooks of steel all through the tour--unless
something worse happens to me, or to some of us because of me."
"Biddy, dear, don't be morbid. Nothing bad will happen," I tried to
reassure her.
"Thank you for saying so. It cheers me up. We women folk are so in the
habit of believing anything you men folk tell us. It's really quaint!"
"Stop rotting, and tell me about yourself; and a truce to heiresses and
Cleopatras. You know I'm dying to hear."
"Not a syllable, until you've told me about yourself. Where you're
going, and what the dickens for!"
We laughed into each other's eyes. To do so, I had to look a long way
down, and she a long way up. This in itself is a pleasantly Victorian
thing for a man to do in these days of Jerrybuilt girls, on the same
level or a story or two higher than himself. I'm not a tall man: just
the dull average five foot ten or eleven that appears taller, while it
keeps lean--so naturally I have a hopeless yearning for nymph-like
creatures who pretend to be engaged when I ask them to dance. Still,
there's consolation and homely comfort in talking with a little woman
who makes you feel the next best thing to a giant. Biddy is an
old-fashioned five foot four in her highest heels; and as she smiled up at
me I saw that she hadn't changed a jot in the last ten years, despite
the tragedy that had involved her. Not a silver thread in the black
hair, not a line on the creamy round face.
"You're just yourself," I said.
"I oughtn't to be. I know that very well. I ought to be a Dido and
Niobe and Cassandra rolled into one. I'm a brute not to be dead or look
a hag. I've gone through horrors, and the secrets I know could put
dozens of people in prison, if not electrocute them. But you see I'm
not the right type of person for the kind of life I've had, as I should
be if I were in a story book, and the author had created me to suit my
background. I can't help flapping up out of my own ashes before they're
cold. I can't help laughing in the face of fate."
"And looking a girl of twenty-three, at most, while you do it!"
"If I look a girl, I must be a phenomenon as well as a phoenix, for
nobody knows better than you that my Bible age is thirty-one if it's a
day. And I think Burke and Debrett have got the same tale to tell about
you, eh?"
"They have. I was always delighted to share something with you."
"You can have the whole share of my age over twenty-six. There's one
advantage 'Mrs. Jones' has. She can, if her looking-glass doesn't
forbid, go back to that classic age dear to all sensible adventuresses.